Black Skin, White Masks, Chapter 1

 I don't have a lot of time to summarize Chapter 1, so I'll just note a few things.

First, Fanon spends a lot of time discussing how the use of a creole speech marks the black people of the Caribbean as distinct from the Frenchmen of mainland France, and is a cause of much anxiety. Caribbean people who have lived in France make a point of distancing themselves from their roots by speaking "proper" French, and have much anxiety over this. Much of this discussion reminds me of things linguist John McWhorter has said, about how we have to get past the idea that dialects, creoles, etc. are "wrong." They are perfectly fine systems of language with rich vocabularies and internally consistent rules of grammar and usage. It is fine and proper for children to learn and use "standard" dialects for the purpose of interacting outside their community, something that people in many societies throughout the world and throughout history have done and still do as a matter of course. But the purpose of learning a "standard" language should be to communicate easily with more people, not to distance oneself from a shameful identity.

Second, Fanon notes that plenty of people in French colonies can understand standard French just fine and it is demeaning to act like they can't. Just as they suffer humiliation from having their dialect degraded, they likewise suffer humiliation from well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) people who talk down to them. This he rightly calls out as racism.

On to chapter 2.

Black Skin, White Masks: Intro

 I read the intro. I don't have a lot of time, but I do want to summarize it. Basically, he argues that it is unhealthy to be a person defined by a race, either via pride or shame regarding that race, and it is similarly unhealthy to be a person seeking to masquerade culturally as another race. It is healthy to be simply a person who eschews racial identification.

So he says that black men and white men are unhealthy, but men are fine. Since this was a book written in French in the 1950's, there may be nuances missing in the translation, things that don't carry over well to how we speak about race in 2021. And the gendered language is even more complicated, given the differences between the 1950's and 2020's, and also the differences between French and English. Take it for what it's worth.

Do not take him as someone deliberately obtuse about race and color. He makes it clear that the book will discuss how living as a subject of colonialism screws people up. He sees racism as real and a problem, and will address it unapologetically.

Let's see how the book unfolds.

Next read: Black Skin, White masks by Frantz Fanon

 My next read will be Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon. Fanon was a psychiatrist from the French Caribbean who spent time in revolutionary Algeria and wrote extensively on race and identity in an explicitly colonialist system. I came upon a recommendation of his works a few months ago but can no longer remember who recommended it or why. Nonetheless, I added it to a reading list and now here I am. Let's see what he has to say.

American Idyll, Chapter 2

 Chapter 2 is about the notion of an "average" American. I won't attempt to summarize it because it's a very dense chapter, full of summaries of other writers' summaries of the history and how they responded to it. I'll just note two big takeaways:

1) The "average" American is an artificial construct. While I'll go to the mat arguing that standardized tests are useful for carefully-defined purposes, they aren't everything, and they certainly don't tell you everything that you need to know about people. People with scores in the center of a distribution are a hugely varied bunch by every measure other than scores, and I reject any technocratic effort to shepherd all of them into a small number of paths. For that matter, I reject any effort to shepherd people anywhere else in the distribution into a small number of paths. A score may rule out a few things from a huge range of options, or add a few more things to a huge range of options, but there's a huge range of options in any case.

Much of what she is reacting to is efforts to over-use scores.

2) Test scores can be used for elitist purposes, but she notes that humanities education was actually critiqued as being unsuitable for the non-elite, and hence some commentators looked down upon humanities rather than looking down on the non-elite. If you celebrate the middle then you'll look with suspicion upon subjects for the elite. If you celebrate the elite you'll look with disdain on those not prepared for elite subjects.

I wish that the debate about "academic" versus "vocational" education wasn't an either/or. People should study "traditional academic subjects" both because they provide useful insights for life AND because stretching the mind is worthwhile in its own right. We can study Shakespeare for insights into power, relationships, etc., but let's face it: There are plenty of other ways to learn about those matters. First and foremost we study Shakespeare because the plays are delightful. We study disordered materials in physics in part because they are useful, but for many applications all you really need to know is a few parameters that engineers already know how to measure.  We also study disorder because it is fascinating.

People should stretch their minds. People should also learn how to do useful things. The real world requires both. Some might focus on one more than the other at a particular stage of life, but why does it have to be either/or?

American Idyll, Chapter 1: Meritocracy

 Chapter 1 is written as a summary of history and thinkers. She covers a lot of things I've heard before, including standardized tests and Hofstadter's critiques of anti-intellectualism. I could summarize everything she's said, but that would be a lot of space (she packs a lot in) and frankly I don't take issue with much. The meta issue is that she is critiquing meritocracy as a technocratic hierarchy. I have more than enough issues with that, so I don't disagree. But meritocracy is an idea with two very different usages, subject to two different critiques. Besides an overall societal hierarchy based on technocracy, "meritocracy" also refers to hiring workers or selecting students based on qualifications for the particular position in question. Merit for the job is narrower than merit to run society. Being qualified to study a particular subject at a particular level is different from being qualified to enter the leadership class.

Liu critiques standardized tests alongside efforts to make education more "relevant" that Hofstadter critiqued. I'm not sure that the two things really belong together for critique. Sure, testing can be combined with tracking to give some people a less "academic" and more vocational education, while others get more traditional liberal arts or whatever. Whatever the advantages or disadvantages of such tracking, when you DON'T track you wind up having to dumb things down. (Ask me how I know.) Testing and tracking is the best hope for offering rigorous education at all. Otherwise we have to go to the lowest common denominator.

I'm not sure that I'm seeing how Liu will tie these things into anti-elitism. Testing is elitism.

Now, Liu does note that if we make teachers accountable for test scores then we can wind up stripping the richness from education and make it into desperate attempts to boost scores. That ultimately weakens intellectualism and is a form of anti-elitism. But testing is also one of the few tools we have to actually preserve some truly academic education. Educators who know their students are ready can demand more than educators who fear that their students aren't ready. (Ask me how I know.)

Now, Liu does make the point that one of the early goals of testing was to smash a hereditary elite by opening it to smart kids of every background, e.g. Columbia opening up to children of immigrants instead of traditional WASPs. That's a type of anti-elitism, but also a new type of elitism.